A St. Paul police car waits Friday outside an apartment building, where a 10-year-old boy reportedly fatally stabbed his father after an argument between his parents. The victim, Thomas Simmons, 34, had been out drinking with co-workers before the fatal confrontation.

The 10-year-old boy who stabbed his father to death while his parents argued early Friday in their St. Paul apartment didn’t mean to hurt his dad, the boy’s mother said today.

“It happened so fast,” the mother said. “My son, with the knife … it was so fast.”

Thomas Christopher Simmons, 34, a Subway shop worker, died from the stab wound his son inflicted, police said. Police released the boy, who is now with his mother.
The mother said Simmons, her longtime boyfriend, had been drinking and was shouting threats prior to the stabbing, but did not hit anyone or anything.

She also said media reports that Simmons threatened her, the boy and their 6-year-old twins with a pipe were not true.

“My son thought he was threatening us, but it was just with words,” she said. “My son thought his dad was going to do something. That’s how it happened. When you fight around kids like that, they’re going to take to heart what they hear and say.”

The mother said she wanted to talk about what happened in her apartment Friday morning to set the story straight, she said, and to let people know that her son is not a monster — and neither was Simmons.

“He had problems,” she said. “Yes, we have argued. I just don’t want people looking at him thinking he deserved it.”

She said that Simmons came to her apartment after a night of drinking. The couple argued. Her children heard the fight, which included threats against their mother. The 10-year-old, fearing for the woman’s safety, picked up a knife.

“My son, he was just trying to scare his dad,” she said. “He didn’t even realize what happened after it happened.”

But Simmons was hurt — and bleeding profusely.

The mother said she was overwhelmed.

“I’m trying to deal with the 10-year-old, trying to deal with the twins, trying to stop Thomas from bleeding,” the mother said.

Neighbors, including Danny Cline and two other people, stepped in. Cline tried to calm the children. A woman — the mother doesn’t know her name — held a towel to Simmons’s bleeding chest.

“These are really nice people,” the mother said. “I didn’t realize how nice they were until something like this happened.”

Reports of beatings with a pipe that are circulating in the media aren’t true, the mother stressed during an interview this morning.

“None of the neighbors witnessed the stabbing,” she said. “They saw the arguing beforehand … they saw the aftermath.”

The only people in the apartment early Friday morning were Simmons, his girlfriend and their three children: the 10-year-old boy and the six-year-old twins.

Simmons had a history of abusive behavior brought on by drinking, the mother said. She said she is the same woman Simmons threatened in September of 2004 in Inver Grove Heights.

The police report states Simmons wielded a sawed-off shotgun in the confrontation. The mother said he didn’t threaten her with a gun.

“We’ve been trying to get that changed for three years,” she said Saturday.

Police arrested Simmons, and one of his brothers, who was present, told officers Simmons had “mental health issues” and had been drinking.

Simmons pleaded guilty to felony possession of a short-barreled shotgun in Dakota County District Court. He was sentenced to 45 days in jail and three years’ probation. He also was ordered to have no contact with his girlfriend.

Simmons violated his probation repeatedly, admitted he had contact with the girlfriend, drove without a license and used illegal drugs, prosecutors said.

Thomas Simmons and the child’s mother have been together for about 11 years, the mother said. They met through mutual friends after Simmons moved to the Twin Cities from Mississippi.

The couple never married, but have “been together since the first day we met,” the mother said.

She said that even through Simmons’s alcohol-induced abuse, the couple stayed together.

“It’s scary trying to start over when you’ve been with somebody so long,” she said.

After police and paramedics took Simmons away in an ambulance, the mother and her children assumed the father was going to live.

“I told them that he would be in the hospital a couple of days,” she said, relying on information fed to her by police.

But Simmons didn’t live.

“I just had to tell him yesterday that his daddy was dead,” the mother said. “He just thought he hurt his dad.”

He’s not handling it well, she said. Today she and her son are in St. Paul with relatives.

“Right now we’re seriously trying to focus on my son. He’s getting help right now,” she said. “The family’s not blaming him. Nobody blames him for what happened.”

At the end of the interview, the mother said: “I have to go be with my son.”

“That’s his biggest hurt right now,” she said. “He worries that his family isn’t going to be there for him.”

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